


Unique

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Litha to Lammas [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Getting Together, Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, Patronus, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 00:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19734748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Harry thinks Blaise is the only one in the whole school who is trying to live after the war the same way he is. Interest leads to a greater attraction.





	Unique

**Author's Note:**

> Another one of my "From Litha to Lammas" fics, for Lythrica, who asked for Harry/Blaise without smut.

****Harry noticed him first during one of the Quidditch games, which was kind of strange, because he should have been keeping an eye on the Snitch.

But still, the one Slytherin who sat in the stands, watching the game, but wasn’t madly jeering at the Gryffindors was kind of noticeable. Harry found himself turning his broom away from a patch of sky that he’d only been peering at anyway to mislead Malfoy so he could keep an eye on him.

Blaise Zabini. Yes, that was his name. Harry had _seen_ him before; he just hadn’t _noticed_ him. His face had a slight mask of interest, but his eyes were glazed in boredom. Then he met Harry’s gaze, and his own snapped back into something like attention.

“Harry! The _Snitch_!”

It wasn’t; it was Ginny helpfully yelling to distract the Slytherin Beaters. But Harry found himself snapping his own attention away from Blaise as if he’d been burned, and hurtling into the air to find the real thing.

It probably didn’t mean anything, anyway. Someone could avoid jeering and still have the kind of half-sullen anger that most of the Slytherins did after the war, like a dog who knew it wasn’t supposed to bite but really, really wanted to. Harry would probably go to breakfast the next day and hear Zabini ostentatiously stopping himself halfway through “Mudblood,” and then carefully emphasizing the “—ggleborn” part of the right word.

*

But he didn’t. In fact, Zabini didn’t speak during breakfast at all. Instead, Harry saw Zabini sitting there with an expression of intense disgust as he watched his Housemates. At first Harry thought it was just for Goyle’s table manners, but then he realized Malfoy was doing his idiot act again and it actually put Zabini off.

“And then I said, well, all right, if you’re _Muggleborn_ ,” Malfoy finished loudly, and Harry saw a Slytherin first-year hunching over and clutching her fork. Someone who should have been in school last year, probably, given the height difference between her and the rest of the firsties, Harry thought, and couldn’t attend because of Voldemort’s asinine policies. And then she had come into school knowing nothing bad about the Slytherins, or maybe couldn’t talk the Sorting Hat out of its choice, and now she was suffering.

Harry stood up.

The attention of the Great Hall turned to him, and he held back a sigh. It was so fucking annoying, how that happened all the time, and not just from his own House. But he carried on refusing to give interviews, or skive off classes, or do anything else that would justify them in treating him as different.

He walked over to the end of the Slytherin table and nodded to the Muggleborn girl. “Do you need me to say something to him?” he asked. “Or would you prefer to take care of the situation yourself? I could give you dueling lessons, you know. That prat Malfoy is going to run away with his tail between his legs, if his history is any indication.”

She just gaped at him. Malfoy was the one who stood up, red in the face. “And what right do _you_ have to interfere in internal Slytherin matters, Potter?”

“Not very internal if you blab them in front of the Great Hall, now, are they, Malfoy?” Harry drawled, facing him. He had testified for both Malfoy and Lucius in the Death Eater trials, but with life-debts satisfied, that was over between them. And Malfoy had gone back to blood prejudice as if it was a lifeline. Hermione said she thought he was actually ashamed, he was just doing it to fit in with people like Goyle and Parkinson and would change once he was out of Hogwarts, but Harry frankly didn’t give a shit. “And I’m offering to give someone lessons the way I wish someone had me.”

“Since when do _you_ care about Slytherins?”

That was Zabini. Harry stared at him a second; he hadn’t thought the confrontation would draw him into responding. But then he shrugged and said, “You know what I care about? Avoiding a sodding repeat of that sodding war. If that means teaching people to defend themselves and opposing blood prejudice, I don’t care if I’m doing it in Gryffindor or Slytherin.”

“Mr. Potter, _language_!”

Harry turned to face Professor McGonagall. “Of course, Headmistress. But then can I ask that you stop the people who I _know_ are calling other students Mudbloods all the time? You frown, but you never treat it like swearing. You should. It’s worse.”

McGonagall narrowed her eyes at him. Harry knew she was personally having a hard time being Headmistress, with so many people comparing her to Dumbledore and finding her wanting. He didn’t give a shit about that, either. “That word is not actually against school rules, Mr. Potter.” She stood up with her warning glare alternating between him and Malfoy. “What you have said is.”

Harry stared at her. He had always thought that no one punished Malfoy and other people for saying words like Mudblood because no professor overheard them, or else Malfoy and the others had enough power and influence to get away with it. But to hear that it just _wasn’t against school rules…_

“Mr. Potter!”

Harry clenched his hand. He had burned away part of the Slytherin table where his palm was resting on it. The Slytherin girl he had defended was staring up at him with desperate eyes. Harry turned away from McGonagall as if she wasn’t there and asked her, “What’s your name?”

“Um. Lynna Ashley.”

Malfoy sneered and started to make some other remark, probably about Ashley’s surname, but Harry turned his head a little, and those words froze in his throat. “Did you want dueling lessons?”

Ashley stared at him, and then nodded. “Would you really teach me? I know, um, everyone tells me,” she said, and peeked at the House crest on his robes, “that Gryffindors don’t like Slytherins.”

“I want to stop all kinds of wars,” Harry said, and held his hand out. “The last war got started by someone who was in Slytherin, sure, but people who were in Gryffindor helped him by deciding _everyone_ who came from Slytherin was evil. Will you come with me and take dueling lessons?”

Ashley nodded again, and placed her hand in his. Someone else stood up. Harry glanced up, expecting it to maybe be one of the other young Slytherins who’d had it with Malfoy’s bullying and brutality, but it was Zabini.

“I’ll take those lessons, too, Potter, if you’re offering,” he murmured, his eyes boring into Harry.

*

“But you’re teaching the _enemy_ how to fight!”

Ron and Hermione had accompanied Harry to the Room of Requirement, spluttering all the way—well, spluttering mixed with logical argument, on Hermione’s part—but that was the first thing Ron had said that made Harry turn around. Ron very shortly looked as if he wished Harry hadn’t, by the way he backed away and shook his head a little.

“I’m not saying don’t teach them, mate. I’m saying maybe think about it.”

“They’re not the enemy,” Harry said, and he hadn’t even known his voice could _sound_ like that, low and passionate. “That kind of attitude is what would keep the war going. I’m going to teach a young Muggleborn girl who has to put up with blood prejudice every day and a Slytherin who defied his House to ask. They’re not the _enemy_.”

“Um, Harry—”

“Don’t you start, Hermione.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Hermione said, staring over his shoulder. “Just that you might have a few more people to teach than that.”

Harry started and turned. Coming towards him were Ashley, Zabini, and Bulstrode. There were also a few sixth-year Slytherins that he didn’t know, although he recognized one after a second’s squinting as Herodotus Greeley, one of the Slytherin Quidditch team’s new Chasers.

“Zabini? I thought you and Ashley were coming alone.”

“There are other people in Slytherin who want to learn how to defend themselves.” Zabini halted in front of him and gave him a single dispassionate stare, then nodded to the people behind him. “Since you survived the war, we reckon you must be good at it.”

“I wasn’t planning to restart the D.A.!”

“Good thing, since you didn’t allow Slytherins into that.”

Harry held Zabini’s gaze and suppressed the immediate response he wanted to make. That wouldn’t help with things like not starting the war again. “That year? You know exactly why.”

Zabini paused, then nodded. “You could have got to know the rest of us who didn’t want anything to do with that nonsense, but I concede that we could also have seen beyond the red and gold.” He turned to the door of the Room of Requirement. “Shall we?”

*

“Contrary to your insinuation, Potter, I _don’t_ know why I can’t cast a Patronus.”

Harry sighed and moved over to stand next to Zabini. The rest of Potter’s Followers—a name that had been Bulstrode’s invention and which he couldn’t persuade them to get rid of—had left for the day. He thought Zabini was progressing well; after all, he could already produce more silvery mist than any of the other Slytherins. But Zabini was determined to have a corporeal Patronus like Ron, Hermione, and Harry.

 _Maybe it’s just that latent Slytherin-Gryffindor competitiveness,_ Harry thought, and stepped behind Zabini. “May I?”

Zabini was tense and watchful for a minute, which Harry understood better than he wanted to admit. Then he nodded.

Harry gently put his hands on Zabini’s shoulders and guided his arms into position, then took hold of his wrist. “Not all of it is the wand motion and the stance, but some of it is,” he murmured. “You have to adopt a _defensive_ stance. That makes it work better. The Patronus is defensive magic at its heart, after all.”

“None of the books I read about it said anything—”

“It’s just intuition.” There was a note in Zabini’s voice that made Harry shrug uncomfortably. He moved Zabini’s wrist back into position from where he had wandered, and then said quietly, “Now. What’s the happiest memory you have?”

Zabini’s shoulders hunched. Harry pushed them back down again. “That’s not something I can share with you, Potter.”

“All right. Then what’s the memory that you’ve been using to try and conjure the Patronus? How happy is it?”

Zabini hesitated. Then he said, “Fairly.”

“But not the happiest you have?”

The silence passed until Zabini finally mumbled, sounding irritated about being made to confront it, “No.”

Harry nodded. He thought he knew why. “And you’re concerned about relaxing enough to call up that memory around a bunch of Gryffindors, right? I can reassure you that none of us can read minds, but I know that’s not enough,” he added, as he watched Zabini’s shoulders tighten again. “So. We’re going to stand here until you get comfortable enough around me to use that memory.” He rested his hands on Zabini’s shoulders, giving plenty of warning.

Zabini fidgeted and made loud comments under his breath for a bit, but since Harry neither moved nor tried to do anything to upset him, he gradually relaxed. Then he leaned back a little. Harry didn’t know if he was trying to get Harry to move away or if this was some test, to try and make Harry catch him before he crashed into the floor. Harry ended up tightening his hold on Zabini and saying, softly, again, “I’m here.”

Zabini closed his eyes and seemed to contemplate something. Then he flourished his wand in a swift motion and said, softly rather than loudly, “ _Expecto Patronum_.”

Harry watched a silvery shape form in the middle of the floor. For an instant, it had four legs and a heavy head, and he knew that Zabini was close to a corporeal Patronus but not all the way there. Then the animal turned its face before it vanished, and Harry saw the mane around its neck. He grinned. Most first tries at Patronuses were blobs and it wasn’t possible to tell what they were, but _he_ knew.

“What was it?” Zabini flared his eyes open. “I saw it, I saw the edge of it, it was some kind of cat, do you know—”

“A lion.”

Zabini stopped. His shoulders were completely tense again, hard as rocks, and Harry found it to be unpleasant. He rubbed them without thinking. Zabini spun away from him and turned around scowling. “It was not.”

“Yes, it was.” Harry managed to hold back his grin that a Slytherin had a lion Patronus. Some of the others didn’t make much sense, either, or at least didn’t have an immediate connection the way Harry knew Prongs did to his dad. “Or it will be, when it forms fully. I saw the mane. It’s not easy to mistake a lion’s mane for anything else, you know.”

“But _why_ would I have the symbol of Gryffindor as my Patronus?”

“I really don’t know,” Harry had to admit. “Your Patronus is supposed to be symbolic of something you find protective, but I don’t understand most of the connections. Hermione has that otter, and I think it’s just because she likes otters.”

“You—” Zabini stopped abruptly and sprinted out the door.

Harry tried to follow him, but by the time he got into the corridor, Zabini had vanished. Harry walked slowly back to Gryffindor Tower, shaking his head. He could understand why most Slytherins would be upset about having the symbol of a rival House as their Patronus, but anger or disgust hadn’t been the expression on Zabini’s face.

He’d looked _afraid_.

*

Zabini did come back to lessons with the Followers after that, which relieved Harry because he’d been afraid Zabini wouldn’t. But he kept away from Harry and avoided his eyes, and his progress with the Patronus Charm slowed down again. Harry wasn’t sure if Zabini was afraid of showing his lion to anyone else, or if he was trying desperately to get his Patronus to change into something else.

It turned out to be the latter. He stormed up to Harry a week later and demanded, “I want to know how the fuck you _change_ it.”

“Careful, the Headmistress will get after you for language,” Harry said, glancing up from turning the mats he’d conjured for them to fall on back into ordinary floor.

Zabini didn’t look to be in the mood for jokes. “I want to know how you change your Patronus,” he repeated, his fingers twitching around his wand.

Harry sighed. “Listen, are you afraid that your Housemates are going to report you for having an embarrassing one or something? Because you know that Bulstrode’s beetle isn’t going to impress anyone, and all you have to do is distract attention to Malfoy if you get really desperate.” Malfoy was being shunned by most of his Housemates now, except Parkinson, Goyle, and the rest of them the war had taught nothing. There were plenty of Slytherins who didn’t want lessons in defensive magic from the Boy-Who-Lived, but who could read political currents just fine.

“No.” Zabini raised his wand and locked the door of the Room of Requirement, which was mildly impressive, since Harry normally asked for a room that only he could lock. “Listen, Potter. I know the reason it’s a lion.”

“Oh?” Harry asked without really believing Zabini would tell him. The boy was intensely private, even though both Ashley and Bulstrode had started to open up a little in recent weeks.

“It’s you.”

Harry goggled at him. “Excuse me?” he asked finally, shaking his head. “How could I represent something protective to you?”

“Oh, I don’t _know_. It couldn’t have _anything_ to do with teaching me defensive magic and the like, could it?”

Harry winced a little. “All right. Well, listen. If you—if you want to change it, then you’ll need to change who you think of as a protector.”

Zabini laughed a little wildly. “Who else is there? Professor Snape didn’t do as good a job of shielding us as he should have. My mother—she’s not protective, Potter. You tell me that, and then you tell me it’s going to be bloody impossible.” He breathed out slowly. “There has to be some other way.”

Harry hesitated, but he could tell Zabini the truth without saying anything about Tonks and her love for Remus. “I saw someone whose Patronus had changed, but it was because she fell in love.”

Zabini was silent, his face jerking. Then he said, “That’s even more impossible than the other,” and turned and unlocked the door and fled.

Harry watched him with an ache in his heart. He’d felt like that, sometimes, when the rest of the school turned on him and he didn’t know if he would ever find the way to the family he wanted. But even then, he’d had Ron and Hermione, and the knowledge that his parents had _died_ to protect him.

He would go to the library and see if there really wasn’t any other way to change a Patronus. For Zabini’s sake, he hoped there was.

*

But Harry had to go back to the Room of Requirement a week later with a heavy feeling in his chest, because he really hadn’t found anything that would let someone change their Patronus. Zabini didn’t show up when Ashley and Bulstrode and the few other Slytherins did, and Harry found himself wondering if he’d changed his mind so that he wouldn’t ever come back.

 _That would be terrible,_ Harry thought, and managed to calm down his pacing so that he could show Ashley a Shield Charm. He had other people to teach besides Zabini, he reminded himself sternly. He didn’t even know for sure why Zabini had joined their little group in the first place. He couldn’t dwell on it.

But when the session went past and Zabini wasn’t there, Harry felt as though someone had dumped a whole cup of bile down his throat. He knew that he would have to go and find Zabini, even if it was just a simple explanation for why Zabini wasn’t going to show up anymore. Like he’d learned all he wanted to or something.

_Then he could have the courtesy to come and say that to me._

But why should Zabini have to? He and Harry weren’t friends.

Harry paused over that thought for a long time. It felt true and wrong at the same time, and he didn’t know why.

*

Harry found Zabini in the library a week later, frantically looking at books. Harry watched him from a distance for a bit. Zabini would flip through a book, stare at a few pages, then throw it aside. Madam Pince was already giving him the kind of irritated stare that would result in a scolding.

Harry took a deep breath and walked towards Zabini. He caught a glimpse of one of the titles Zabini had already thrown aside, and winced. _How to Compel Your Inner Soul_. It was obvious that Zabini still wanted some way to change the form of his Patronus.

Zabini didn’t notice him until Harry was practically leaning over the table. Then he jerked back and gave Harry a look of pure disgust. “Haven’t you done enough damage?” he hissed.

“Listen, Zabini. What if there’s no way to change your Patronus? What if you have to face up to the worst-case scenario?”

There was silence, which at least eased Madam Pince’s stare. Zabini watched Harry out of the corner of his eye. “Where are you going with this?” he finally asked.

“I just want you to remember,” Harry said, “that things _can_ change. Maybe it’s less visible with wankers like Malfoy around, but Lynna’s walking around prouder now. Millicent is more relaxed and confident than I’ve ever seen her. Who are you going to expose yourself to if you use your Patronus? Imagine what would happen if that person knew. Then imagine what you can do to get yourself out of the situation.”

Zabini’s eyes narrowed. “Is that the way you handled things like facing a basilisk in your second year?”

Harry laughed a little. “Well, I generally had to think faster then. And my answers for the worst person who I could be vulnerable to were more likely to be things like ‘giant snake’ than ‘bigoted Housemate.’ But yeah, that’s sort of like it.”

Zabini tapped his fingers tensely against the table. Then he said, “I still have to survive two terms in Slytherin.”

“I know. But then you’ll be free of that lot. So maybe you keep your Patronus hidden until the end of the year, and then you can go somewhere else where people appreciate you more and use it there.”

Zabini made a sour face. “One of the reasons I wanted to learn the Charm was so that I could impress people like Malfoy.”

“What you do,” Harry said, pretty confident this would work based on the other dealings he’d had with Malfoy, “is ask him where _his_ Patronus is. Then you wait with a slight smile while he splutters, and nod a little and walk away when he can’t produce one.”

Zabini laughed. The sound was low, but made Harry smile the way he usually only did when he heard Ron and Hermione laugh.

“You sound like you know so well how to handle him.” Zabini’s voice was low, too, and he moved a hand towards the chair on the other side of the table. Harry gladly sat. “Is it just because of your rivalry over the last seven years?”

Harry shook his head a little. “That, but also because I know how to handle bullies in general. And don’t tell anyone this, Zabini,” he whispered mock-seriously, leaning in, “but the Hat did seriously consider putting me in Slytherin, you know.”

Zabini’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yes. Said I could be great there. But it allowed me to choose my House, and that’s how I ended up in Gryffindor.” Harry settled back in the chair with a grin. “And someone we both know said that our choices make us who we are. You can still be whoever you want even if you’re in Slytherin and have the kind of Patronus Charm you do.”

Zabini nodded, his eyes distant. Harry pulled out his own Charms book, satisfied. He might as well work since he was here in the library.

“Potter?”

Harry glanced up. “Yeah?”

“It’s ridiculous that you’ve taught me magic I thought I could never do and given me a secret of yours freely, and yet we’re calling each other by our last names. Call me Blaise. Harry.”

Blaise was ridiculously handsome when he smiled. Harry managed to smile back, but the sensation in his gut was—

Pretty close to the way his chest had felt when he looked at Ginny in his sixth year.

 _Well,_ Harry thought, slightly in shock, as he began to work on Charms and Blaise went to put some of the books he’d used back on the shelves. _That’s—something to find out._

*

Harry didn’t have to make excuses after that to spend time with Blaise. He started coming back to the lessons that Potter’s Followers held again, and he worked in the library a lot, with a faint smile to welcome Harry when he showed up. He even came to the Quidditch pitch to watch Harry practice sometimes, and they walked next to the lake and spent the dinner on Christmas Day sitting at the same bench.

His friends noticed, of course.

“You seem awfully friendly with Zabini,” Hermione said, peering at him over the top of a scroll so long Harry thought Professor Flitwick might crumble under the weight. “Is he still having trouble learning the Patronus Charm?”

“Oh, no,” Harry said, and eyed his own Charms essay without enthusiasm. He had already said everything that was in the textbook and everything he could think of about this particular spell. What else could you come _up_ with? Harry sighed and reached across the library table to pick up another book near Hermione. “He got that a while ago.”

“Then why, mate?” Ron came back to the table, staggering under the weight of several books. An undistinguished Auror from the Ministry was teaching Defense this year, and Ron had determined to do some extra reading. Probably not _only_ for the way it made Hermione beam at him, Harry thought charitably. “Does he want you to help him with something else?”

“We just like spending time together.”

Harry knew he sounded too defensive when he attracted even Ron’s attention. Hermione put her Charms essay aside. “Are you okay, Harry?”

“Yes. I—I like spending time with him, okay?”

“That’s fine.” Ron held up his hands and then started sorting through the Defense books, which all seemed to be about trolls. “As long as you don’t come up someday and tell us that he was repairing a Vanishing Cabinet in the Room of Requirement or something.”

“Harry turned out to be _right_ about that, I will have you remember,” Hermione said, sounding a little stuffy.

“Still doesn’t mean I want to hear about it. And there are no more Death Eaters for Zabini to bring through, anyway.”

“I call him Blaise,” Harry blurted out, and then hid his flaming red face behind the biggest of Ron’s books, grabbed at random.

There was a little silence, and then Ron said, “That’s fine.”

“It is,” Hermione echoed.

If she sounded a little more smug and happier than she would most of the time, Harry told himself resolutely, then he didn’t need to pay attention to it. All he needed to do was work on this Charms essay, and ignore the way that his ears continued to burn as if he’d been outside in the January cold.

*

“I wanted to give you something.”

Harry looked up with a smile. Blaise often lingered now in the Room of Requirement when the rest of Potter’s Followers had left, and Harry found himself stretching out a hand to welcome him without thinking about it. “Of course. Some other Christmas gift that you forgot to give me at Christmas?” That was Blaise’s excuse for the almost constant string of small objects, secrets, stories, and fleeting touches that he’d given Harry in the last few weeks.

Blaise smiled back, but it was a smile with enough of an edge that Harry sat up, wondering if someone had threatened Blaise and he was looking for help. He stepped up to Harry. Harry stood from his chair and moved a step forwards in response to meet him.

Blaise placed his lips delicately over Harry’s.

Harry caught his breath in shock and joy, gripped Blaise’s hair, and pulled Blaise towards him. Blaise actually stumbled, hands wheeling for a second. Harry grabbed one without letting go of Blaise’s mouth or his hair, and settled it on his waist. Blaise’s other hand found its own way after a few seconds.

Blaise finally drew away. He was panting in awe, his mouth slightly open. Harry leaned in to lick his lips. Blaise tasted cool and exciting.

“I thought you’d run the first time I tried that,” Blaise finally croaked.

“I knew a while ago that I liked you,” Harry muttered. Now that the moment was past and he knew Blaise might think he was weird, his ears were burning again the way they had in that conversation with Ron and Hermione. “I just didn’t want to scare you away by moving too fast.”

“And now?” Blaise was twining his fingers in the front of Harry’s robes, his eyes shining. His whole face seemed to open up in a way Harry had never seen before, even over Christmas or the day Blaise had told Harry to call him by his first name.

 _This is what he looks like when he trusts someone,_ Harry thought, and rested his hand against Blaise’s cheek. “Now I know you like me back, so it’s fine.”

“All those gifts…” Blaise swallowed. “I really did want to give them to you, you know. I didn’t mean them as bribes. I just didn’t know any other way to get a Gryffindor’s attention.”

“You don’t have to bribe me,” Harry said. “But I enjoyed them. And I hope you enjoyed what I gave back.” He’d been meeting Blaise’s small stories and secrets with stories of his own, and he’d slipped Blaise little conjured baubles and the like, although they weren’t as pretty or expensive as the trinkets Blaise got him.

“Yes.” Blaise abruptly closed his eyes. “Harry.” He still didn’t call Harry by his name very often, and this one warmed Harry like butterbeer all the way down to his toes. “I’m sorry. I never thought things would be like this—move this fast.”

“It’s all right,” Harry said. “I was open to it happening when I realized that your Patronus was a lion, I think.”

Blaise cracked one eye open. “Lingering House prejudice? That showed I wasn’t like the other Slytherins?”

“No. Because you said it represented me.” Harry hesitated. “And because I know how to—be close to people I can protect. I’m not as good about it when I can’t protect them.”

Blaise held him abruptly closer. “I would care for you even if you couldn’t protect me.”

“I know.” Harry leaned his head on Blaise’s shoulder. “And I’ve got used to the fact that I can’t protect everyone from everything. All I can do is try.”

*

“Didn’t you _see_ Malfoy’s face?”

“I wasn’t looking at Malfoy! I was looking at that idiot Romilda Vane who still thinks she can trap me with a love potion.”

Blaise leaned against the stones just outside the Great Hall, laughing so hard that it seemed he wouldn’t be getting his breath any time soon. Harry leaned his elbow next to Blaise, grinning. He had thought the deep, open expression when Blaise smiled at him was his favorite, but no, the _laughter_ was his favorite.

“He—he looked like his jaw was going to fall off when you kissed me!” Blaise gasped out, and went back to laughing.

Harry glanced over his shoulder at a flicker of movement from the direction of the Great Hall. The last thing he knew, everyone was still sitting in stunned silence so great that they couldn’t follow him or Blaise. But now someone was peering cautiously around the corner.

It was Malfoy. He abruptly snorted when he saw them and decided to open his mouth. “ _Ha_! I _knew_ this was a joke, Potter! You and Blaise aren’t dating!”

“I’m sorry, we must not have snogged deeply enough to convince you before,” Harry said, and drew Blaise into the kind of kiss that made Blaise’s eyes roll back and him really need the wall to support his weight, while his fingernails scrabbled wildly at the stones for a second.

By the time they looked, Malfoy was gone.

Blaise reached up and cupped his hand behind Harry’s hand, his dark eyes so happy Harry’s breath caught. “What do you say we eat breakfast outside this morning, and leave them to chatter and get used to the idea?”

Harry laughed, and took Blaise’s hand. Blaise led him towards the outside of the castle, head tilted back all the way so that he could watch Harry walk.

At the moment, Harry felt as if he couldn’t ask for anything other than this.

**The End.**


End file.
